1. If I were manager of the Yankees, I would want the major-league leader in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+ playing every single game, but that’s just me. Instead, Aaron Boone has kept Ben Rice out of the starting lineup in three of the last five games. (He also was held out of the lineup completely in the second game of the season.)

“Having the ability to cherry-pick when I fire Benny Rice in a big spot, I like that,” Aaron Boone said before sitting him on Tuesday.

2. So Boone would rather have Rice for one plate appearance of his choice instead of four-plus plate appearances throughout the game. Why stop there? Why not have Aaron Judge do the same? Why not use Max Fried and Cam Schlittler as middle relievers? Not only is Boone giving potential Rice at-bats to players whose careers would likely be over if the Yankees released them today, but he also let Ryan McMahon start against a lefty and not Rice.

3. Now Rice not playing on Tuesday night isn’t why the Yankees lost to the Angels, even if Rice did drive in the Yankees’ only run in his only plate appearance. A day after the best win of the season in which the Yankees blew three different leads before overcoming a two-run deficit in the ninth, they reminded everyone that momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. And when the next day’s starting pitcher allows back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning, well, anyone who thought Monday’s win would get the Yankees on a roll was sorely mistaken. Ryan Weathers gave up four home runs and five earned runs in five innings. But hey, he struck out 10 batters, which is what the Yankees’ front office will be proud of.

“Three misfires to a really good low-ball hitting team is not a good start,” Weathers said. “I wish I could go back and re-do the first, but I’ve just got to take it and roll with it.”

4. Paul Blackburn allowed an earned run and four baserunners in an inning of work and Yerry de los Santos proved why he was in Triple-A up until Wednesday. The pitching was bad, as it has been a lot lately, and the offense was even worse, as it has been a lot lately.

5. The offense had two singles through the first seven innings, which is double what they had through seven innings in multiple games recently. The offense went 5-for-31 with no walks and 12 strikeouts against Reid Detmers, Chase Silseth and Ryan Zeferjahn. Detmers had only made it through five innings once in three previous starts this season and couldn’t be trusted to start a single game last season for a 72-win Angels team. But there he was dominating the Yankees at Yankee Stadium just like another household name lefty in Jeffrey Springs did last Thursday.

6. “Didn’t mount much” has a commanding lead in terms of Boone-ism usage this season. Boone used that phrase after Tuesday’s loss and he has had the opportunity to use the phrase to explain the offense’s performance against Drew Rasmussen and Steven Matz and Jeffrey Springs and Luis Severino and nearly every starter the Yankees have faced since they surprisingly got to Logan Webb on Opening Day.

7. Former Yankee Oswald Peraza went 3-for-3 with a walk and solo home run in the game for the Angels. He has an .838 OPS this season and in one game produced half as many hits as McMahon has this year. That’s notable because the Yankees were willing to take on the roughly $38 million owed to McMahon through 2027, so they wouldn’t have to play Peraza anymore.

“He killed us,” Boone said. “He stung three balls and then works a 12-pitch walk in his last at-bat. He was right in the middle of hurting us tonight.”

8. It’s startling that the Yankees were nearly shut out by the Angels, but even more startling that they have allowed 17 runs to the Angels in 18 innings. The Angels have averaged 4.6 runs per game in all of their other games.

“We’ve played a lot of close games and lost,” Paul Goldschmidt said, maybe not realizing 7-1 is not a close game. “We’ve been one play or pitch away in a lot of these games.”

.9 The Yankees are simply not a good team right now. Good teams don’t lose to bad teams with this kind of regularity. The Yankees have played six opponents to date and five of them didn’t reach the postseason last year and they are a loss away from being .500 against the Giants, Mariners, Marlins, Athletics, Rays and Angels. They don’t purposely bench the best statistical hitter in the league through three weeks. They don’t have a bullpen with a single trusted arm or a rotation with only two reliable starters. They don’t have a lineup with roughly five automatic outs in it every night and they certainly don’t have a manager still learning on the job now in his ninth season after spending his entire life around the game.

10. The Yankees are average, which is why they are 9-8 on the season and just one game over .500 with a chance to fall to .500 on Wednesday with their worst starter going. I knew the Boone Swoon that comes with every Yankees season under this manager would come at some point. I baked it into my projection for this team, I just didn’t think it would come so early, especially against this part of the schedule, which was supposed to be an easy part of the schedule.

1. Things are bad. Really bad. The Yankees have lost five straight and six of seven since Easter. If not for the help of Mark Leiter Jr. and the meltdown he had last Monday, things would be even worse. I can’t think of a worse possible second week of the season to endure, especially following what went on during the first week.

But that first week was clearly a mirage, just like most of the Aaron Boone era has been. This is the ninth season of waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Yankees under his management. The big Game 2 win at Fenway Park in the 2018 ALDS was immediately met by humiliation and elimination. The 2019 ALDS sweep of the Twins and Game 1 rout of the Astros in the ALCS were followed by a team-wide inability to hit for the remainder of the series. Minutes after DJ LeMahieu’s game-tying home run in Game 6 of that ALCS, Jose Altuve walked off the season. A season-saving win in Game 4 of the 2020 ALDS came a day before the Yankees scored a single run in a Game 5 loss. The 13-game winning streak to save the 2021 season was undone when they failed to finish as the first wild card in the final weekend of the season, had to go to Fenway and lost the one-game playoff. The 61-23 start in 2022 was followed by a 38-40 finish. The comeback in the 2022 ALDS against the Guardians was met with a sweep at the hands of the Astros in the ALCS. The re-signing of Aaron Judge that offseason was followed by him missing two months of the next season as a team that was 11 games over .500 in June finished two games over .500. A 49-21 start to 2024 led to a 45-47 finish, and the first World Series appearance in 15 years led to the most embarrassing inning and demise in World Series history. A 42-25 start to 2025 was followed by a 23-31 stretch as the team blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays and then was eliminated by the Blue Jays in the ALDS. So when the Yankees ripped off eight wins in their first 10 games in 2026, a week like this last week should have been expected.

2. The issue isn’t that the Yankees ave lost five straight and six of seven. Losses are going to happen. It’s how they have lost these games. The team is 0-6 in one-run games this season. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you think it’s a small sample size or bad luck? Or do you think it’s because the Yankees are managed by someone who uses J.C. Escarra and Randal Grichuk in game-changing, ninth-inning at-bats and someone who still hasn’t figured out how to utilize a bullpen? Do you think instead of blaming it on luck and chance maybe the blame should be placed on a roster constructed with a complete lack of situational hitters whose only way to score runs is to hit the ball over the fence?

3. Five of the Yankees’ nine everyday players have below-league-average OPS+ for the season and two of their four bench bats do as well. Trent Grisham has been 42 percent worse than league average, Austin Wells 45 percent, Jazz Chisholm 53 percent, Ryan McMahon 86 percent and Jose Caballero 87 percent. Escarra at -74 percent and Grichuk at -100 percent are breaking the laws of mathematics with their ineptitude. If Grichuk were to now play 100 percent better than he has, he would still be 100 percent worse than league average. You reading this right now have provided more value to the Yankees at the plate this season by simply watching the games from your home than Escarra or Grichuk have.

4. The lineup is a recipe for disaster on good days when the top of it is hitting because the bottom is full of automatic outs. At best, the Yankees give away one-third of their outs every game by employing the players they do. On a bad day, when the top of the order isn’t hitting (which it hasn’t been), the lineup is an atrocity.

This isn’t a mistake. This is by design. The Yankees purposely ran it back with the same position players to create this lineup. This isn’t the product of injuries to starters and more injuries to the best backups. This isn’t the 2019 Replacement Yankees relying on Mike Tauchman to carry them for weeks. The lineup you see is the lineup the Yankees wanted this season. So when I wrote endlessly about my fear of running it back all offseason, the worst possible scenario is what I envisioned, and that’s what the Yankees are providing.

5. It would help if the Yankees had more than a couple trustworthy relievers in the bullpen to win close games, but they don’t have that either. Brian Cashman let his two best relievers from this time last year leave through free agency and replaced them with in-house options he didn’t feel were good enough to be on the major-league roster at the end of last season. But even if the Yankees had better bullpen options, it’s hard to imagine Boone properly using them given the way he let Ryan Yarbrough face Chandler Simpson on Sunday after the Yankees cut the deficit to one run. Why not Tim Hill there in the seventh? Hill had thrown one pitch (yes, one pitch) over the previous four days.

6. Unless the Yankees can outhit Boone or outpitch him with efforts like Max Fried and Cam Schlittler gave the first two times through the rotation, it’s going to be very hard for the Yankees to win close games, just like it has been in the past. When you have a manager who thinks Grichuk should bat instead of a borderline Hall of Famer in Paul Goldschmidt with the game on the line, only to admit after the game that Goldschmidt should have hit, you get the type of results the Yankees have produced in the last five games, games in which hits have been harder to come by than logical Boone decisions. After getting their asses kicked by their own division last season, the Yankees are 0-3 to start this one.

7. You would think the least the Yankees could do is play error-free, clean baseball in the field since they can’t manage, hit or pitch with any reliability. But they can’t do that either. The way they pissed away the late innings on Saturday and then let the Rays tack on two runs on Sunday was appalling. But that’s Boone baseball. Being a laughingstock defensively when the ball is put in play is how this team has always played under Boone. The difference between the Yankees and Rays aside from hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll is that Kevin Cash squeezes every last bit of talent and strategic options out of his team, puts his players in the best possible position to succeed and manages a game by utilizing the individual skillsets of his players. Boone has trouble filling out a sensible lineup card, seems to pull relievers out of a hat for the order in which they are used and sits around waiting for a three-run home run or a shutout from a starter so the Yankees can shake hands at the end of a game.

8. What went on with Chisholm to end Saturday’s game is something I would rather not think about again for the rest of my life, and yet, it’s the only thing I can think about when I see Chisholm’s name or face. His admission that he doesn’t know the rules of force outs as a professional baseball player seeking a nine-figure contract was mystifying. But for as crazy and truly unbelievable as it was to hear those words come out of Chisholm’s mouth, it was even more so to hear Boone say that Chisholm does know the rule after Chisholm told everyone he didn’t. There’s sticking up and defending your players, and then there’s whatever Boone is now doing. It’s one thing to tell everyone a starter had “good stuff” on a day he was pulled in the third inning, but to basically tell everyone you know the inner workings of Chisholm’s brain better than Chisholm does, well, we’ve officially gone off the deep end. I have also said Boone will defend his players to no end, but saying a player knows something they said they don’t know when the players provided that information on his own volition is really to “no end.”

(Chisholm went 2-for-13 in the three games in Tampa in a dome after saying he hasn’t hit yet because of the cold weather.)

9. “Good compete today as far as finishing,” Boone said after Sunday’s loss.

The Yankees didn’t finish anything. They lost another one-run game.

Boone got testy when asked about McMahon’s continued offensive struggles, telling the media they “love to bring up his name.”

Yes, people tend to love to bring up a player the team targeted with a trade, agreeing to take on the $40 million owed to him. A player who is 4-for-35 on the season with no extra base hits through mid-April. The funniest moment of Sunday’s game came when McMahon was up with two outs in the ninth and the tying and go-ahead runs on base and Joe Girardi said, “This could turn his whole season around.” McMahon then swung at the first pitch and weakly grounded out to first to end the game.

“We’re going to hit,” Boone said, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”

There should be some doubt.

Boone also called this team “a new group” as the organization-wide stance to never reference “running it back” from 2025 to 2026 seems to be still alive and well.

10. It’s back to the Bronx to host a four-game series against the Angels. The Angels are 8-8, aren’t any good and seem destined for another last-place finish in the AL West. And because of that, every Yankees fan should be worried about this matchup. When you get nearly swept by the A’s at home and then get swept by the Rays, it’s hard to have any confidence in this team. And if the top of the order doesn’t hit the ball over the fence, they’ll make the Angels look as good as they made the A’s and Rays look.

1. On Friday in Tampa, the Yankees faced a left-handed starter for the second time in as many days, and for the second time in as many days they lost in embarrassing fashion, falling 5-3 to the Rays.

On Wednesday, the Yankees had one hit after the first inning. On Thursday, they were one-hit for the game. On Friday, they were held hitless from the end of the first inning until Ben Rice’s pinch-hit home run with one out in the eighth. The Yankees have five runs, 10 hits and 35 strikeouts over their last three games. They lost all three and have lost four of their last five. The enjoyment of the first week-and-a-half of the season has been completely undone by the offense.

2. “We’ve got to hit,” Austin Wells said.

Nice of Wells to chime in on the state of the offense, considering he has five hits this season in 38 plate appearances, with just one going for extra bases (a double). He has yet to drive in a run through the first 13 games.

“It’s going to happen sometimes from the offense,” Aaron Boone said, as the manager went into his Mary Poppins-like bag of annual bullshit clichés to describe his offense. “They’re going to get it rolling and some people are going to pay the price.”

This comes one day after Boone said, “Hopefully we’ll get things going.” Who exactly are the Yankees going to make pay? I know. The No. 4 and 5 starters on the worst teams in baseball and 26th-man-on-the-roster relievers, that’s who. That’s what these Yankees do. Lose close games (0-4 in one-run games this year) and then beat the shit out of fringe major leaguers to prop up their personal stats and the team’s run differential to make everyone say things like, “Oooo, the Yankees led the league in runs last year!” Then come the postseason, when it’s cold and only elite pitchers take the mound, they revert back to the team we have seen these last few days: a team that survives on the long ball, can’t score leadoff doubles and can’t get runners in from third with less than two outs.

3. It wasn’t cold in Tampa on Friday because the game was played indoors in a controlled environment. But that didn’t stop Jazz Chisholm from continuing to suck. On Thursday, Chisholm said his “swing is great” and the only reason he isn’t producing is because it’s cold outside in New York City. In Friday’s game, Chisholm popped up to third with Rosario on third in the first inning, struck out in the fourth inning (and wasted another challenge in the process), grounded out in the seventh inning and grounded out for the first out of the ninth with the tying run on base. Another stellar 0-for-4 night for Mr. 50/50.

4. It was another hitless night for Randal Grichuk, Jose Caballero and Wells as well. Grichuk was brought in because of his career success against lefties and he struck out two more times and remains 0-for-the-season. Caballero has been so bad he has fans yearning for Anthony Volpe and the only reason everyone isn’t calling for Wells to be benched is because the alternative is J.C. Escarra, who is also 0-for-the-season.

During the offseason, in an interview with Kevin Durant, Aaron Judge said three players he was excited about were Chisholm, Wells and Ryan McMahon.

“He can be one of the greats in the game,” Judge said of Chisholm. “I think this will be a big year for him to take that next step.”

Chisholm is hitting .170/.235/.234.

“I think this will be a big year for him,” Judge said of Wells, “he’s really going to take that next step.”

Wells is hitting .152/.263/.182.

“I think there’s just so much more potential,” Judge said of McMahon. “I think what he’s about to do with the bat this year, he’s going to take off for us.”

McMahon is hitting .069/.250/.069.

Judge is as bad at this as his front office. That’s how you end up with a new contract for Anthony Rizzo, an extended leash for DJ LeMahieu and going on a ninth season with Boone as manager.

5. The bottom of the lineup sucks, but so does the top. Trent Grisham served as a pinch hitter with two outs in the ninth and the tying runs on second and third and he popped up to first to end the game. If there’s a Yankees fan out there who thought Grisham would drive those runs in to extend the game, I would like to meet you. The $22 Million Qualifying Offer Man has been a disaster to this point with a .445 OPS and no home runs after hitting 34 last year. No one could have seen that coming! No one!

6. Judge continues to look lost, afraid to use the ABS system in his favor while the opposition continues to strike him out with it. The common narrative around Judge is “Hey, he started out this way two years ago and went on to win MVP!” Yeah, you know what else happened two years ago? The Yankees had Juan Soto to carry the team while Judge slumped. The only hitter capable of carrying the team right now is Rice, who didn’t even start on Friday despite career success against Jeffrey Springs, and in his one plate appearance of the night, he homered. I don’t know, if it were me I would play the current best bat on the team every game. But then again, I care about winning and winning every game.

I’m sure Judge will get it going at some point, though one of these seasons he won’t get it going and will no longer be the generational, all-time talent he has been in his prime. Maybe that’s this year? Maybe it’s next year? Maybe it’s in 2030. I don’t know when it will be, but the Yankees need to stop taking for granted his Hall of Fame talent with the idea that it will never end and stop being so reliant on one bat.

7. Cody Bellinger set a precedent at the end of his time in Los Angeles that there are seasons when he’s awful. It’s too early this season to say that, but with each passing game he looks like a player the Yankees paid for his past rather than his future, and now that he has his massive, guaranteed payday, it’s never out of the question that he may turn back into the guy the best organization in baseball — the Dodgers — were willing to non-tender after his age 26 season.

(Giancarlo Stanton has been pretty good and gets a pass.)

8. The last three games represent the first time in franchise history that the Yankees had any three-game span with 15 or fewer total bases and at least 35 strikeouts. (Stat from Katie Sharp.) Another line to add to the Boone era Yankees history! The Yankees have the fewest hits in the majors and are third-worst in batting average at .201.

9. “I don’t think there’s any concern,” Rice said.

Spoken like a true Boone Yankee. There’s never any concern. Not on April 10. Not in mid-July. Not in September. Not when facing elimination in October. Not when stifled by a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen in a bullpen game with the season on the line.

10. One of these days, and maybe as early as Saturday, the Yankees will explode for 15 runs, have a laugher of a win where they hit against a position player at the end of the game and everyone will say, “There they are! There’s the Bronx Bombers!” But for a team that has 12 home runs in 13 games and for a team that has a bench player with as many home runs this season as everyday hitters in the 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 spots combined, a laugher here and there against shit teams to improve the run differential isn’t going to fool me. It’s not early because this isn’t a “new” team, and while it’s technically a “new” season, it’s really just a continuation of last season. The only difference being this year we might hear “It’s right in front of us” much earlier than the summer if the Yankees continue to play this way.

1. The Athletics showed up in New York giving up nearly six runs a game and the Yankees eked out a win on Tuesday because one of their bench bats hit two home runs, then they got one-hit from the second inning on in a loss on Wednesday and got one-hit in a 1-0 loss on Thursday.

2. The ‘Run It Back’ offense is doing exactly what I feared it would. It’s heavily reliant on the top of the order carrying it, and when the top of the order isn’t hitting (as it currently isn’t) then the Yankees can’t win. At 8-4, the start of the season looks great, but the Yankees are a Paul Goldschmidt home run, an eighth-inning rally against the Marlins and the Amed Rosario game from it being much different.

3. Getting one-hit from the second inning on in Wednesday’s loss was embarrassing enough, but the Yankees took embarrassing to a new level on Thursday when they were one-hit for the entire nine innings, and if not for a seventh-inning single by Ben Rice, the Yankees may have been no-hit by Jeffrey Springs.

The Yankees stocked their bench with right-handed bats that have a history of destroying left-handed pitching, so that they couldn’t be shut down by left-handers anymore. So much for that. All of the platoon bats were stifled by Springs. The Yankees have faced two left-handed starters this season in Springs and Robbie Ray and both have shut down the platoon bats.

4. It’s been October and postseason weather in the Bronx since the Yankees returned home last week and they have played like they do in October and the postseason. Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm are nowhere to be found, Aaron Judge hasn’t done anything since his first-inning home run against the Marlins a week ago, the bottom of the order remains automatic outs, the starting pitching has been spotty, the bullpen shaky and Aaron Boone is making questionable choices.

5. “Look, we got shut down today,” Boone said.

Actually, you got shut down on Wednesday and Thursday and everyone aside from Rosario got shut down on Tuesday.

“We didn’t generate much,” Boone said. “We have a few guys struggling to get on track a little bit.”

A few guys? Let’s check in on each player’s OPS so far this season with their career OPS in parentheses.

Ben Rice: 1.155 (.803)
Paul Goldschmidt: .967 (.882)
Amed Rosario: .941 (.709)
Giancarlo Stanton: .811 (.873)
Aaron Judge: .758 (1.025)
Cody Bellinger: .746 (.817)
Trent Grisham: .597 (.719)
Jazz Chisholm: .511 (.764)
Austin Wells: .486 (.709)
Jose Caballero: .362 (.646)
Ryan McMahon: .319 (.735)
J.C. Escarra: .100 (.579)
Randal Grichuk: .000 (.762)

Just a few guys!

“Hopefully, we’ll get things going,” Boone said.

“Hopefully?” Boone is one to tell you they will get things going. That a corner will be turned. That everything is always right in front of them. Now he’s resorting to “hopefully” after 12 games? That’s not a great sign.

6. Boone talked about the weather in New York impacting the offense. I guess the A’s were playing in different weather when they were batting. While the A’s may have not been lighting up the scoreboard with runs, they were still able to generate hits. They outhit the Yankees 17-5 in the last two games of the series and 16-2 from the second inning of Wednesday through the end of Thursday.

7. “I can’t feel my hands right now,” Chisholm said. “And when you can’t feel your hands, it’s hard to swing.”

Chisholm also talked about how he told the media last year he isn’t good until the weather warms up.

“I’m not using that as an excuse,” Chisholm said.

Sounds like an excuse to me.

“I said the same thing last year,” Chisholm said. “As soon as the weather heats up, I heat up. That’s what it is.”

The Yankees play half of their games in New York and New York weather is typically cold for all of April and sometimes most of May. They plan to play games in October when it’s also very cold. So Chisholm is saying he’s worthless for at least the first month of the season at home and also in the postseason since it’s cold during both months. Yes, please give him a long-term contract after this season.

8. Ryan Weathers (8 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 7 K) was great for the first time as a Yankee, but his superb outing was wasted by the offense. At least he was able to give the bullpen a break since no starter had given any real length over the last week and the bullpen is fatigued and showing it.

9. The loss on Thursday moved the Yankees to 0-4 in one-run games this season and 8-0 in all other games. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this team, which lacks smart, situational hitters, has a shaky bullpen and has a manager in his ninth season of having in-game difficulties is 0-4 in one-run games. Just bad luck!

10. The Yankees head to Tampa where the games are played inside in a controlled environment. So the “Boohoo, it’s cold!” excuse is gone for the next three days. If the Yankees’ bats can’t wake up at Tropicana Field, they won’t have Mother Nature to blame.

The Rays are starting Steven Matz on Friday and Shane McClanahan on Sunday, so that’s two more lefties for the Yankees’ righty-heavy lineup to show they can actually hit left-handed pitching. Luis Gil will make his season debut on Friday after being left out of the rotation and off the Opening Day roster. If he wants to remain in the rotation ahead of Weathers and Will Warren when Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole are healthy (and if everyone else remains healthy) then pitching well immediately would be a good idea.

1. The Yankees had a 1-0 lead with the bases loaded and one out against former Yankee Luis Severino (who they have destroyed twice in two starts since leaving the organization) in the first inning on Wednesday night. It looked like the game could quickly become a laugher. It didn’t. The Yankees scored one more run in the inning and then only produced one more hit for the rest of the game in an eventual 3-2 loss to the Athletics.

2. It was a dismal offensive performance, but nothing uncommon to this team this season. Yes, the Yankees are 8-3 with the best record in the American League and tied for the best record in baseball, but as I have written many times in these Thoughts, when I write about the Yankees, it’s not simply based on the last game or the last week, it’s with the big picture in mind. And right now, the big-picture perspective for this offense is why the ‘Run It Back’ lineup construction kept me up many nights this offseason.

3. It’s not good that Amed Rosario hit as many home runs in three at-bats on Tuesday as Trent Grisham, Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton, Jazz Chisholm, Austin Wells, Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero have combined for this season. I’m not worried about Bellinger or Stanton finding their power. I’m very worried about Chisholm’s mental state as an impending free agent and a player who says he’s chasing a 50/50 season. I’m very worried about Grisham who was paid $22 million because of one outlier season. I’m worried that the Yankees’ plan to hope Wells (and Anthony Volpe when he returns) could take the next step offensively isn’t working out and that the team’s internal belief they could be the ones to unlock McMahon as a hitter was a foolish task to take on.

4. McMahon isn’t just bad, he’s pretty much the worst hitter in baseball right now. There are 256 players in the majors with at least 30 plate appearances this season and McMahon ranks 255th in batting average, 255th in slugging percentage, 251st in OPS and 250th in strikeout percentage. (Stat provided by Katie Sharp.) McMahon is 2-for-the-season. Two! It’s not much better for the other guys at the bottom of the order either: Chisholm has eight hits, Caballero has six, Wells has five and J.C. Escarra has zero. ZERO! And yet, in the Yankees’ last two losses (on Sunday and Wednesday), Escarra was allowed to hit in the bottom of the ninth in one-run games. But Escarra aside, of all the automatic outs in the Yankees’ lineup, right now McMahon is the most automatic.

“If I knew, I don’t think I’d be in the slow start,” McMahon said after he went 0-for-2 with a walk and two strikeouts on Wednesday. “I’m grinding. I’m not happy about it.”

I’m not mad at McMahon for being unable to hit because that’s who he has always been. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He doesn’t put himself in the lineup every day. He has come to the plate 4,042 times in the regular season over his decade-long career and is a .238 hitter, who has been nine percent worse than league average during that time. He’s never been able to hit, so while he’s been worse this season than at any other point in his career, he’s not going to suddenly figure it out and become even an average hitter. At some point he will do better than he is now as the worst hitter in baseball, but his ceiling is that of a below-league-average hitter.

What I am mad about is that he will be given a frustratingly-long leash because he’s a veteran, he’s making $16 million this season and the Yankees are stubborn about personnel choices that make their trade and free-agent choices look bad. Rosario could start hitting like Judge when he plays (the MVP version of Judge, not the version of Judge we have seen this year) and it wouldn’t matter. McMahon is going to play. Even though I thought Boone would bench Rosario after his two-homer game for McMahon on Wednesday, even Boone knew he couldn’t do that. So instead, he benched Caballero and put McMahon right back in there to do nothing.

This isn’t an “It’s early!” or “It’s only been 11 games!” case either. You can use that for explaining why Judge hasn’t looked like himself or why Stanton only has one home run. It’s not a valid reason for McMahon or the rest of the bottom of the order sucking. They have always sucked! This isn’t small-sample-size noise. This is who they are. The Yankees believed they could be better, and they aren’t.

5. The Yankees losing two of their last three and needing late-game rallies to avoid additional losses on Friday and Tuesday isn’t all on the offense. It’s on the starting pitching too. Ryan Weathers was bad (for the second time in as many Yankees starts) on Friday, Max Fried struggled against a weak Marlins offense on Sunday, Will Warren once again couldn’t give length on Wednesday and it took Cam Schlittler 84 pitches to get through five innings on Tuesday. The starters need to be better because over the last week their lack of length is forcing the Bullpen of Question Marks to be overworked and it’s showing. After pitching in multiple games in the World Baseball Classic and then being needed for nearly two 40-pitch saves in the last week, David Bednar is struggling to put away hitters. He’s been shaky this season and on Wednesday he allowed the A’s to break the 2-2 tie in the ninth.

“I was able to get ahead of guys, but I wasn’t able to put them away,” Bednar said. “It can’t happen.”

6. There is very little trust in the bullpen right now. I don’t trust Bednar because he’s been overworked over the last month. I don’t trust Camilo Doval because he’s been untrustworthy since the moment he became a Yankee. I don’t trust Fernando Cruz because he could strike out the side on nine pitches or walk the bases loaded on 12. I trust Tim Hill the most and Brent Headrick the second most. That’s not a great place to be.

7. It’s also on the defense. The Yankees will tell you Escarra could start for a lot of other teams in the league even though he can’t. Yes, he’s so good that the Yankees were OK with sending him down for a lot of last season and going with Rice as their backup catcher. He’s so good that he’s hitless this season and takes swings like he’s blindfolded. On Wednesday, not only did he put another 0-for, but he was unable to block a Warren breaking ball in the dirt that led to the A’s tying the game.

Rice, who has looked much better in the field this season, looked like his old self on Wednesday. He booted a routine ground ball, couldn’t pick a ball that any major-league first baseman should be able to pick and also dropped a pickoff throw with the runner caught leaving early.

Add in the couple of miscues from Caballero at short so far, McMahon’s new habit of throwing every ball in the dirt to first and Chisholm’s nonchalant play last Friday (which he negated with his amazing diving catch on Wednesday) and you have the type of defensive baseball the Yankees have always played during the Boone era.

8. Yes, the Yankees are 8-3. Yes, they are still waiting for Judge to really get going and for Stanton to start hitting the ball over the wall. Yes, they are getting closer to having Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole in the rotation. But there are still a lot of flaws on this team. Flaws that existed last season, weren’t addressed in the offseason and haven’t gotten better this season. Even when Judge and Stanton get going (and hopefully Grisham and Chisholm too), the bottom of the order is still going to be a problem. Even when Rodon and Cole come back, the trustworthy options in the bullpen still won’t exist. Again, it’s not early and it’s not only 11 games because when you run it back with the same team from one year to the next, one year to the next becomes a continuation, not something new.

9. The Yankees will face their first left-handed starter on Thursday since last Tuesday in Seattle. That means the righty-heavy lineup will be used. Boone didn’t come close to using the best possible lineup I provided on Wednesday to face Severino, but here’s the best possible lineup to go against Jeffery Springs on Thursday.

Amed Rosario, 3B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Randal Grichuk, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Austin Wells, C

(In reality, Boone will use Goldschmidt to lead off instead of Rosario.)

10. Weathers gets the ball for the third time as a Yankee. He has done nothing to prove he should keep his rotation spot once Rodon is ready, and I don’t have high expectations for him on Thursday. I don’t have any expectations for him as a hard-thrower who has no idea where the ball is going when it leaves his hand. It’s going to be cold again like it was in his start on Friday, which clearly rattled him, and the A’s have a lineup that can make you pay if you’re not careful. It’s going to be a tough rubber game to win before the Yankees head to Tampa.